Talk:Terrorism

Added to the Core controversial articles page

This article is controversial if we agree that some states practice terrorism:

Terrorism has been practiced by both left-wing and right-wing political organizations, religious and nationalistic groups, revolutionaries, as well as — to use the somewhat controversial notion of "state terrorism" — armies, police, and security forces.

I have put this article in the list of Core controversial articles (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Core_controversial_articles) because it is clear to me that state terrorism is a type of terrorism (that deserves ample space in this article, in this day and age).

Pierre-Alain Gouanvic 00:28, 2 July 2008 (CDT)

First, then, we need a "mainstream" definition of state terror. There is, for example, a qualitative difference, no matter what one believes about the death penalty, between execution after a long judicial process, and "night and fog" disappearance and the night (the Nazi nacht und nebel)

I also revised some of the weapons-related material in the lead. Nuclear weapons do not fall into an utterly unique category, when considering such things as the genetic coding for Type A botulinum toxin spliced into normal enteric Eschericia coli, or, rumored to have been a Soviet experiment, a chimeric virus with elements of smallpox and Ebola. Howard C. Berkowitz 11:55, 2 July 2008 (CDT)

Regarding an eventual definition of state terrorism, I would follow the lead given by the former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan:

"...regardless of the differences between governments on the question of definition of terrorism, what is clear and what we can all agree on is any deliberate attack on innocent civilians, regardless of one's cause, is unacceptable and fits into the definition of terrorism. And I think this we can all be clear on." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism#Controversy)

This would be for the mainstream component. Then, I would state the following:

(Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, described as pioneers in the concept of State Terrorism, have argued) that the distinction between state and non-state terror is morally relativist, and distracts from or justifies state terrorism perpetrated by favored states, typically those of wealthy and developed nations (Chomsky and Herman, 1979).

In other words, I would find evidence and theories suggesting that powers and super-powers can willfully decide to behave outside of the international rules, to inspire fear, deliberately. A canonical example would be the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, any doctrine that declares, with Macchiavelli, that the Prince, or the super-power, may act violently, without justifications that are acceptable to others, deliberately creates a sense of fear. The doctrine of pre-emptive strikes-wars could be compared to a terrorist doctrine. This is the kind of things that the Monde Diplomatique discusses, if I'm not mistaken. This seems logical, doesn'it?

Pierre-Alain Gouanvic 01:12, 5 July 2008 (CDT)

I have no problem in describing the practices of political police and the like, directed at individual groups of citizens or residents, as state terror. I do, however, have a serious problem with labeling efforts to break a national will, as long as both proportionality and knowledge of the consequences are understood, as state terror. Personally, I'd much rather have been at Hiroshima than in Tokyo during the fire raids. Based on the limited knowledge of nuclear weapons at the time, I am not going to accept the nuclear attacks as state terror. As opposed to the RAF "dehousing" campaigns, neither nuclear attack was deliberately directed at a civilian area; there were major military targets near the aiming point of each. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Interesting discussion. But I wanted to point out that, as most people realize, that there is no commonly accepted definition of terrorism, and this whole subject serves as a flash point for all kinds of disagreements. I have a sense of the mainstream sense of terrorism, which is perhaps closer to the HB view, and which is listed below with an alternative definition of terrorism with references; this definition doesn't consider supposedly legitimate governments as being sponsors of "state terrorism", that is, doesn't put much emphasis on governments as terrorists. However, this mainstream view of terrorism is at odds with my personal view of terrorism, which I see as "violence against individual rights" and which does, in fact, include governments as being possible terrorists. In my book Common Sense on Amazon, I argue that there are three possible terrorists -- criminals (neighbors who violate our rights), tyrants (our own government if it violates our rights, detentions, torture, even perhaps frisking at airports) and foreign terrorists (Osama bin Laden et al). And my thesis is that it's not sensible to prevent only one type of terrorist, but that tackling all three types is necessary, and that the common theme underlying all successful prevention methods is what I call light, that is, exposure. Light to prevent crime is identified movement in public (which people agree to); to prevent tyranny it's exposing what governments do; to prevent foreign terrorism it's exposure of treaties. My ultimate terrorist was Hitler, not bin Laden. But this is controversial stuff, and my sense is people are unwilling (for many reasons) to confront what terrorism is all about.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Defense Department-funded report on terrorism

This report, 'How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida' covers hundreds of terrorist organisations worldwide, and includes various statistics and interesting points about the "war on terror". John Stephenson 04:24, 31 July 2008 (CDT)

Some bold improvements

I have tried to make the lead somewhat less emotional, as well as stating some of the issues in taxonomy.

Fukuyama's argument that terrorism is a tactic resonates strongly with me. A biological weapon is a biological weapon; "bioterrorism" is no more than the use of biological weapons, against civilian populations, to achieve a political objective.

An improvised explosive device (IED) or land mine is a weapon, not terrorist or not. IEDs and mines were major causes of mortality and morbidity in the Vietnam War, but if one military force used them as an "automatic ambush" against another, it would be hard to call them terrorism.

I propose, therefore, to start cutting back the weapons and tactics details, giving examples of how their use could be considered terroristic, but linking to the actual details in other articles. Unquestionably, there are blurred cases, such as the use of biological weapons by Japanese Unit 731 against Chinese populations; there were indeed treaty violations and this could be a war crime, but the principal goal seemed to be assisting the advance of ground forces and "terrorism" doesn't easily fit. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:39, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The Ganor link is dead. I'll look for other definitions.

Further, the History section should cut back to broad patterns; history of terrorism in individual places belongs in subarticles. It's not terribly practical, with large countries, to put their terrorism pattern under one motivation.

Anyone else reading this? Howard C. Berkowitz 01:42, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm reading this Howard. My sense is that the whole issue of "strategy" versus "tactic" is mostly ancillary to what terrorism is, but if you feel strongly about it, I'm not going to make a huge issue about it. But a general approach to this whole subject might be as follows -- since there are different types of terrorism and senses of it -- which depend on who the terrorist is and what their target is -- then maybe we could have the overall word terrorism be an umbrella term referring to the specific types, and we could have specific articles about each type of terrorism. And what could the specific types be? And here I'm less sure but let's try this:--Thomas Wright Sulcer 11:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

• terrorism as a strategy in war (ie tactics like you say)
• terrorism by radical groups to achieve a political objective
• international terrorism
• terrorism as organized crime (drugs, intimidation of witnesses, bribing police)
• terrorism by governments (state terrorism)
• other types of terrorism

What do you think?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 11:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Tom, I just have a minute; appropriately, I'm off to a seminar on Iran. I should be back between 4 and 5 Eastern. May I suggest that you look at military doctrine, and let me know if we are using "strategy" and "tactic" in the same way? I'm not sure what you mean by the first bullet above. "Organized crime" is difficult with most definitions of terrorism, although the "narco-terrorism" where the drug industry is a quasi-state does fit with the inherently political definition of terrorism.

You see, I rarely will simply call someone a "terrorist" even though he practices "terror". There are huge differences among 9/11 and Lod Airport and Marks & Spencer and the Haymarket Riot and the Maccabees and the London Iranian embassy hostage situation -- to say nothing of the differences among Harris' dehousing, the fire attack on Tokyo and the nuclear attacks, Guernica and Rotterdam, Mutual Assured Destruction, Lidice, and Operation Condor. The problem is that calling them all terrorism makes the term useless as a differentiator. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we agree about the difference between strategy and tactics; where I disagree with you is thinking that this distinction is that important to terrorism. If you conceive of strategy as a general plan for overpowering an opponent, then you could conceive of terrorism as one tactic which might accomplish this. But the whole strategy vs tactics assumes we're talking about a war situation, and terrorism may or may not involve being in a war situation.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I looked over the article military doctrine -- good article so far.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The general problem with the word terrorism is that it's a big, confusing umbrella term, used by many people for many different purposes, with nasty connotations; even you and I can't agree what it means. What happens is that the more you try to specify the term and say exactly what it is, the more we lose people. I think the sensible approach (or strategy) is to keep it simple, and stick to what most people agree on -- and go into more specifics with specific senses of the term (eg international terrorism, terrorism during war, state terrorism, media crime, etc or whatever sub articles you think we should include.)--Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Strategy vs. tactics

It's not at all obvious to me that the great majority of people using terrorism don't consider themselves in war, and have strategies from the sophisticated to the trivial. al-Qaeda, although not a nation-state, clearly operates at all four levels of military doctrine. A person blowing up abortion clinics still has a strategy of stopping abortion, which is a political and thus strategic concept. The leaders of Operation Condor thought they were conducting a defensive war strategy against Communism, but even more against the established order.

Try two assumptions to control the definition of terror: it has a political motivation and it targets civilians. I think you will find that clarifies a great many situations. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think some acts of terrorism don't have a political motivation. Serial killers, such as the Washington metro snipers, create terror on a massive scale, and they clearly have a political effect, but in their minds, the serial killers don't see themselves as trying to accomplish some political purpose. And some acts of terrorism don't target civilians, but soldiers or governments -- consider the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 198? -- 240 US Marines died -- wasn't that terrorism? I think the sensible thing to do is not try to be too exact in any definition.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 00:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I think the CZ value is to try to be exact, although I agree the creating of the emotion "terror" is not synonymous with "terrorism". Take the D.C. snipers -- I lived there at the time, and indeed shopped at one of the target stores. John Muhammad had some warped political agenda, which wasn't very clear but could qualify as self-radicalization. Practical events from the Oklahoma City bombing to Nidal Hasan mean that we do have to consider "lone-wolf" terrorism.

The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings were emphatically political, and didn't just target U.S. Marines; there was a near-simultaneous bombing of a French barracks. Both were under UN auspices. Yes, it was a suicide attack, but on a military target; I have trouble calling it terrorism. Capture and torture of soldiers is much closer to terrorism, but bombing a theoretically (if far too lightly) defended target? The 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, but not the World Trade Center, still can qualify as terrorism because the passengers in American Airlines Flight 77 were in no way combatants. Were the Japanese kamikaze terrorists?

Overly broad definitions of terrorism are causing much confusion in the public sphere. Now, I certainly don't object to the article explicitly discussing nonconventional attacks on military targets, or how a Ted Bundy differs from a Timothy McVeigh. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree CZ should try to be exact, but the problem is the term terrorism is essentially abstract, blurry, inexact. So your efforts to try to be exact about something inexact essentially mean that instead of the "Mainstream view" of terrorism, you're writing about the "Howard Berkowitz" view of terrorism. For instance, I think most people would consider the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings as terrorism -- I think this is the mainstream view whether we like this or not. I don't feel strongly enough about this to fuss with you endlessly about it Howard; my own personal view is that I have major problems with both the mainstream view AND your sense of what terrorism is; but I think this is one of those subject areas where nobody can agree.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 13:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Not trying to be heavy-handed here, but I think we are running into a CZ model here. The idea is that definitions don't come from "most people", but from experts. In this case, I'm a military workgroup editor that has been doing professional work on terrorism since the late sixties. The definition I propose is a reasonable synthesis of the one used in professional literature, and, indeed, in quite a number of international organizations and governments.

In all fairness, this has been a sensitive area. Larry Sanger has taken a more "most people" view on certain areas, terrorism being one of them. I disagree with him, but, at this point, the expert-vs.-common view needs to be resolved by a future Editorial Council.

What would seem appropriate is to have a section in terrorism on "Are all suicide attacks terrorism?", linking to and expanding the suicide attack article. The Beirut attack is especially difficult, as Lebanon was beyond failed state and into open civil war — and responsibility has never been completely clear for the barracks and embassy attacks, although there are some good ideas (see Robert Baer).

In other words, have plenty of related articles on the non-core meaning of terrorism, have lots of links and redirects, but keep the definitions in main articles focused. Weapons of mass destruction have a quite specific professional definition, but there has been increasing use, in U.S. prosecutions, of including "high explosives" in WMD terrorism indictments — and, while I hope I'm misreading it, a backpack in one current prosecution.

Letting popular opinion drive definitions so they include everything means that they eventually exclude nothing, and new terms are needed to be specific.

So, I'm going to make a working Military Editor ruling that a terrorist act must deliberately target civilians or civilian infrastructures, and must have some political goal. By all means have related things, but in separate, highly linked articles. This, incidentally, excludes neither state terrorism nor lone-wolf activities. It would exclude the kamikaze and other Japanese tokko (Special Attack) tactics. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Before doing much more on this article, I'm going to wait to hear if other Editors can agree with that working ruling. There's the practical issue that if we pull Approval of V1 or Approve V2, two other editors (Military, History, Politics) will have to be involved. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"Freedom fighter" vs. "Terrorist"

The article contains a common summary that I consider flawed:

It is often said, especially by critics of the West and of capitalism, that terrorism is merely a label ascribed by those in power to those who do not accept their authority, and resist it with violent and unlawful means. On this view, whether someone is better described as a "terrorist" or instead as a "freedom-fighter" depends on whether the state's power is thought to be wielded lawfully and fairly.

This loses sight that virtually all terrorism, save the nihilists, is a political act. I get very confused when a nation (let's say the Third Reich) launches a major conventional war, for political objectives, and the conventional wisdom is that there is collateral damage to civilians. The more proper question is proportionality of the act to the desired political response. To take an extreme example from warfare, the argument can be made that the nuclear attacks on Japan -- not that their effects were fully understood -- were intended to decrease civilian casualties that would result from a ground war.

The "critic" aspect seems emotional. We can recognize it, in the article, as emotional and propagandistic, but not part of the operational calculus of a strategist who uses terror as a tactic. As far as the material in the paragraph starting this, I'm sure Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, and Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone) would be surprised to be called Western capitalists. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Reorganizing

I propose to reorganize the History section on strictly chronological/geographic lines, with motivations as a subordinate level. Right now, it's organized more by ideology, so, for example, one doesn't see there is both Jihadist and anti-abortion terrorism concurrently in the U.S.

This article really needs work. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:43, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Alternative definition of terrorism (from earlier draft on WP)

When at Wikipedia I worked out with several editors a kind of compromise (which got reverted by administrators) but I thought it was a good compromise definition (while allowing that there's MUCH disagreement over this whole subject.) I'll put it here in case anybody is interested, or possibly interested in using the references, but I'm not interested in fussing much over the definition here on CZ:----Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Terrorism, despite considerable disagreement about a precise definition, is often considered to be deliberate violence or the threat of violence directed at innocent non-combatants and governments to cause fear systematically to attract media attention for causes which may be political or ideological or religious and which are viewed as coercive. An act which meets many or all of these criteria is often considered to be terrorism. There is considerable disagreement about whether the term can describe government or religious leaders and whether the term should be extended to include wartime acts. Further, the distinction between terrorism and crime is hard to specify.

The term is charged politically and emotionally and has strong negative connotations. Its meaning often depends on the ideology of the user and the context of its use. Studies have found more than one hundred definitions of the term. At present, there is no internationally agreed-upon definition. Governments have described opponents as terrorists to delegitimize them. Some suggest that the term terrorist is so fraught with conceptual problems that a better term would be violent non-state actor.Template:Citation needed Terrorism has a long history and has been practiced by both right-wing and left-wing political parties, nationalistic groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, criminals, and others.

(end of section)----Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Approval issues

While there is an Approved article, there was, in 2007, discussion about revoking the Approval. As a Military Workgroup Editor, I don't really consider Version 1 of Approved quality, but I'd rather work on extensive revisions and get a new Approved version.

Before spending extensive time on it, however, are there two other Editors (Military, History, Politics) that would, assuming a decent second version, who would work on a nomination? Howard C. Berkowitz 16:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)